You mean if he’ll be a good husband?” She pauses, then says “The ticket is for the man to love the woman more than she loves him.”

Shouldn’t it be equal?”

Mom cackles. “It can never be equal.”

But what if the woman loves the man more?”

A life of hell awaits her. As women, the deck is stacked against us because time is our enemy. We age, while men season. And trust me, there are plenty of women out there looking for a man, and they don’t mind staking a claim on somebody else’s husband, no matter how old, creaky, and deaf they are.”
―
Adriana Trigiani,
Very Valentine

“I love you , Valentine’ is actually a popular phrase used in greeting cards.”If you were sending me one, what would it say?” he asks.I love you, too, Roman.”And there it is, words that I dread to say and do mean, because with them comes the responsibility of owning it, moving forward together and deciding for real who we are to each other. Now we’re not just lovers discovering what we like and sharing what we know. In this mutual declaration, we’re accountable to each other. We’re in love, and now, our relationship has to build slowly and beautifully in order to hold all the joy and misery that lies ahead.”
―
Adriana Trigiani,
Very Valentine

“I used to believe my art had to be about the things that brought me joy and gave me hope. But I learned that art can be found in all of life, even in pain. --Valentine, while in Italy (pg 267)”
―
Adriana Trigiani,
Very Valentine

“The teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teaching were removed.”
―
Theodore Roosevelt

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”
―
C.S. Lewis,
The Problem of Pain

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
―
C.S. Lewis,
The Problem of Pain

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
―
C.S. Lewis,
The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

“Judge not; the workings of his brainAnd of his heart thou canst not see;What looks to thy dim eyes a stain,In God's pure light may only beA scar, brought from some well-won field,Where thou wouldst only faint and yield.”
―
Adelaide Anne Procter